Vivek Ramaswamy Corruption & Ethics Billionaires & Big Business Ohio

Vivek Ramaswamy Spent $690,000 on Private Jets to Campaign in Ohio. Most of It Went to a Company Registered at His Own House.

Campaign finance records show Ramaswamy paid nearly $560,000 to V Leasing LLC, whose listed address is a house he owns. A government watchdog says that if he reimburses himself for the $25 million he loaned his campaign, he will be using donors' money to pay himself.

MAGA Report Cards · Aug 21, 2026

Vivek Ramaswamy Spent $690,000 on Private Jets to Campaign in Ohio. Most of It Went to a Company Registered at His Own House.

Ohio is about 220 miles across. You can drive from one border to the other in a few hours.

Vivek Ramaswamy has spent nearly $690,000 leasing private jets to campaign in it.

That number comes from his own campaign finance reports, reviewed by the Ohio Capital Journal. And the biggest piece of it is the part that should worry Ohio voters most.

Most of the Money Went to a Company at His Own Address

Of that $690,000, nearly $560,000 went to a company called V Leasing LLC.

The address listed for V Leasing LLC is a house Ramaswamy owns.

The remaining $130,000 or so went to TVPX Aircraft Solutions, a company in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Ramaswamy has also loaned his own campaign more than $25 million. Candidates are allowed to pay themselves back for loans like that out of money donors give them.

Put those two facts together and you get why a watchdog group is paying attention.

"If he is basically fronting money to rent a plane from himself, and then if he does not forgive the loans but reimburses himself, he'll essentially be using donor funds to pay himself," said Jordan Libowitz of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Money comes in from supporters, goes out to a company at his house, and can come back to him again.

Ramaswamy's campaign did not answer the Ohio Capital Journal's questions. The paper says it sent them multiple times.

Thirty-Minute Flights

Federal flight records show where the plane actually went. In April and May alone, Ramaswamy flew to at least six campaign events. Several of the Ohio flights lasted about 30 minutes.

April 7 — Columbus to Port Clinton, for an event in Lakeside.
April 8 — Columbus to Cleveland, for an event with the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association.
April 15 — Columbus to Youngstown, to meet the Fraternal Order of Police at the Mahoning County Sheriff's Office.
May 13 — Columbus to Washington, D.C., for a campaign event with Medicare chief Mehmet Oz.
May 21 — Columbus to Cleveland, for an event in Brecksville.
May 22–25 — Columbus to Salt Lake City and back, for a data center energy conference.

David Cohen, who directs the Applied Politics Program at the University of Akron's Bliss Institute, said he can't think of another candidate for Ohio office who has used a private jet as their main way of getting around.

"He's flying between Columbus and Akron for crying out loud, and Columbus and Cleveland," Cohen said. "That's a two hour drive. Get in the car."

"The fact that Ramaswamy has spent two years flying around on his own private jet is really a bad look," he added. "I mean, let's face it: Ohio is not California or Texas."

What He Told Ohioans in May

Here is Ramaswamy talking to a Youngstown television station in May — during the same stretch of weeks as those flights.

"I love long drives."

"You think about the time we spend in Trumbull County, and you think about the time we even spend just going for a nice jog. You think about Cuyahoga National Park, not far from where we are. I'm a nature guy."

He was flying Columbus to Cleveland.

The Same Pattern, Again

This is not the first time Ramaswamy's campaign spending has been hard to see through.

The Ohio Capital Journal previously found that his campaign put more than half a million dollars on credit cards — a practice that hides what the money was actually spent on, because only the card company shows up in the filing. And the outside group buying his ads is funded by five men who don't live in Ohio, through records the state doesn't require to say what was purchased.

A jet leased from himself, a credit card that doesn't itemize, and out-of-state donors whose spending records are blank. Each one on its own is legal. Together they describe a campaign whose money is very difficult for an Ohio voter to follow.

Who This Is For

Ramaswamy is running to govern a state where people are struggling with what things cost. His answer to that has been a property tax plan that would take about $4 billion out of Ohio's schools, police and fire departments.

His Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, talks about driving a Jeep.

"As life becomes even more expensive for Ohio families, Vivek Ramaswamy is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars flying around the world to luxury destinations on his private jet, treating Ohio like a flyover state," said Addie Bullock, a spokeswoman for Acton's campaign. "Ohioans know they can't trust a billionaire who looks down at us from 30,000 feet to understand the challenges we're facing or to fight for us."

That's a campaign talking. But the underlying facts aren't a talking point — they're in the filings Ramaswamy submitted himself.

He spent $690,000 on jets to cross a state you can drive across in an afternoon. He sent most of it to a company registered at a house he owns. He has $25 million in loans out to his own campaign that donors' money can be used to repay. And when a reporter asked about it, his campaign said nothing at all.